


Goodbye (for now)

by MissMollyBloom



Series: The End and The Beginning [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, John Is So Done, S4 Speculation, Sherlock Is Not Okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 14:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8537410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMollyBloom/pseuds/MissMollyBloom
Summary: As devastating and as heartbreaking as the last month had been in the life of John Watson, nothing struck him quite so hard as the moment he opened to door to 221B Baker Street to find the flat empty, stripped of all evidence of prior occupation, and Sherlock Holmes gone.After the broadcast, Sherlock's failure to pursue Moriarty was a puzzle to John. After Molly Hooper is abducted, Sherlock's failure to act drives John to question everything he'd ever believed about his friend, the "great" detective.But not all is as it appears.A fic I couldn't get out of my head after BC's comments about how the end of season 4 will be the end "for now".





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I keep reading all these articles where BC says that s4 will end in a way that will make it hard to come back and do more seasons with the same frequency as in the past (yep, because in BC's mind once every 3 years is "frequent").
> 
> So this is my Sherlolly take on what that would look like.  
> Lots of angst - and Sherlock is a bit not good. But I promise a happy ending.

As devastating and as heartbreaking as the last month had been in the life of John Watson, nothing struck him quite so hard as the moment he opened to door to 221B Baker Street to find the flat empty, stripped of all evidence of prior occupation, and Sherlock Holmes gone.

Only a small, shard of yellow paper remained. It had been torn, it seemed, in haste from one of his friend’s countless volumes and now lay abandoned on the floor.

Two words marked the page, written in Sherlock’s trademark hand. Thought scrawled in the same haste in which it seems the detective had departed Baker Street, the message remained clear:

“Goodbye, John.”

John clutched the paper in his hand, his legs buckling as he stooped down to a crouch.

Sherlock had done a great many things of late that struck John as odd, frustrating, frightening and maddening – but this was the worst of them all.

Why would he leave when, despite his recent loss, there were still people left who loved him, who needed him?

It didn’t make sense.

But then very little about Sherlock’s actions in the last month had made any sense.

In fact, he hadn’t been himself since the morning they’d said their farewells on the tarmac. In many ways it was as if Sherlock Holmes really did leave England that morning and despite the swift stay of execution he never did truly come back.

It’s the only way John could understand why Sherlock would pump himself full of chemicals – a cocktail that would bring down a rhino – but for a veteran junkie like Sherlock was mere children’s candy.

And afterwards, when Sherlock assured them that Moriarty indeed hadn’t come back, he never did explain why instead of chasing down his second in command, Sherlock became obsessed with amassing video surveillance of certain London building–

-the same London building that John had seen his friend fall to his death from just three years earlier.

There was only one clue, one hint at the reason behind Sherlock’s odd behaviour – locking himself in Baker Street, barely sleeping, eating even less so, and with every waking moment this eyes were glued to the three dozen screens arranged on every available surface of the already too-crowded living room.

Just one conversation between two brothers taking place in what they thought was the secret confines of 221B one afternoon, unaware that John was just outside the door.

“I believe it’s time to initiate Janus.” Sherlock said.

John knew the two-headed deity, but had no idea what scheme or plan it referred to – only that the brothers had moved on to Roman rather than Biblical mythology for their clandestine code names.

Mycroft paused, a deep breath audible even for John on the other side of the door, “Are you certain?”

“It’s the only way,” Sherlock fired back with a speed that showed whatever it was, he’d indeed considered all the options.

“Have all the parties on your end been informed?” There was something in the way Mycroft said “parties” that struck John as odd, even months later as he replayed the conversation – over and over and over.

“Yes.” There was something in that one word. A wistfulness? A sadness. Certainly a level of emotion imbued in just one syllable, something so uncharacteristic of John’s friend. “The participants are aware of their roles.”

“And they are,” Mycroft paused, “consenting?” Something about that last word sent a shiver up John’s spine. Whoever they were and whatever it is they were consenting to, it didn’t sound pleasant.

Sherlock snapped then, “They have very little choice, don’t they?”

The sound of Mrs Hudson on the stairs caused the brothers to stop, and revealed John’s arrival.

He never did discover what the conversation meant – no matter how hard he tried to unpack it. He even shared it with Mary, thinking she might find some cypher, some clue.

There was nothing.

Nothing to explain the delivery of dozens of computer monitors to 221B.

Nothing to explain how weeks later, even more arrived.

Nothing to explain how soon they were covering not only every surface of the lounge room at Baker Street, but also into the kitchen, down the hallway and into Sherlock’s bedroom.

Nothing to explain why that every square inch of Bart’s hospital was being watched by Sherlock for every minute of every day as he paced from room to room, eyes scanning screen after screen, never breaking contact to meet John’s concerned gaze whenever he’d come to check on his friend.

Nothing to explain why, after three months, Sherlock refused to even allow John in the door.

But one morning, four months and three days after Moriarty’s resurrection, everything changed.

The call came to John not from Sherlock, but from Lestrade.

“Just calling to let you know-” Lestrade’s voice failed him, his emotions palpable even through the background noise of a bustling New Scotland yard office.

“What is it?” John wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“Something’s happened at Bart’s.”

How would it be anywhere else?

“Bloody Hell, mate, just spit it out,” John barked.

“It’s Molly,” was all Lestrade could manage.

As he hurried to Baker Street, wishing the cabbie would break a speed limit or two, John had to admit that Lestrade’s words were the last ones he’d expected to hear.

And when he entered Baker Street, he was greeted with one of the last things he’d expected to see.

He’d expected the detective in a flurry, on the phone, on the laptop, scanning through images, tracking down leads, doing anything and everything to track down their friend.

What greeted him was quite the opposite.

Instead of moving at the inhuman speed John was used to seeing whenever Sherlock was on a case, here he was entirely still, sitting, almost catatonic, staring at the largest screen in the room. It, like all the others, was playing three seconds of footage on a loop, over and over and over.

Moriarty – or at least someone who looked a lot like him – stalking towards Molly like a lion toying with its prey. Backed into a corner, there was nothing Molly could do, nowhere she could go. Like the lion who attacks, Moriarty dew a knife, plunging it deep into her stomach. Pained, Molly folded in two, leaving Moriarty to pick up her prone form, throw her over his shoulder and carry her away.

And again. Moriarty, lion. Molly, cornered. Knife. Stomach. Pain. Taken away.

And again. Moriarty, Molly. Knife, Stomach. Away.

And again. Moriarty. Molly. Away.

Again and Again, and Sherlock’s eyes never breaking, his face never reacting to the image in front of him.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” was all John could say, the image tearing the very air from his lungs.

Sherlock not only didn’t react to his words, his still, statuesque form showed no indication he was aware of his friend’s very presence.

“So what do you need me to do?” John asked, desperate to do anything, and, to be honest, desperate to leave the morbid scene where Molly’s blood was spilled on every screen everywhere he turned, over and over again.

Silence that stretch out too long if every moment was to count, then.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” John repeated.

“Yes,” Sherlock let the word fall from his lips, empty, emotionless, while his eyes stayed fixed on the screen.

“And what to do you expect to find here?” John asked, pointing to the screen.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes. Now please leave.”

John began asking something but was cut off by a single word, yelled with all the ….

“Go!”

It didn’t take long for Moriarty to return, that is, his image returning on every screen in London. This time, the message was clearly for Sherlock.

“I’ve got something of yours,” said the first message, sung in Moriarty’s trademark sing-song tone, like a child in the playground stealing toys. It made John sick to think of Molly minimised by Moriarty into something so small, so insignificant, so disposable.

In the next, airing a day later, there was no words, only Moriarty playing with a Russian Doll. He opened it up, revealing a dead bird, which he took out, held up to the camera, and then crushed in his hands.

In the final one, Moriarty said one sentence, cryptic enough that no one but Sherlock could gather its meaning: “It will end where it began.”

And with that, every word on every webpage on every computer screen had been transformed. All text replaced with those words, over and over and over.

It will end where it began.

“Do you know what this means?” John asked, infuriated when he arrived at Baker Street to find a still unmoving Sherlock staring at the words as they covered every screen in his house. John could see the unmistakable designs of news websites, blogs and porn portals, all taunting Sherlock.

“Yes, I do,” was Sherlock’s simple response.

“So, will you go?”

“No.”

“No?”

John wanted to scream then, to shake his friend, to slap sense into him the same way Molly did that fateful morning in the lab after his failed drugs test.

“I refuse to believe she means nothing to you, Sherlock. After all this time and all she’s done for you, you can’t tell me you don’t care.”

Sherlock’s jaw stilled then, the first sign of emotion John had seen in his friend for months.

 “Caring won’t save her, John. Nothing can.”

Sherlock didn’t go, he didn’t fight.

And, when the time came, he didn’t attend Molly’s funeral.

It was that day that John had finally had enough, was sick and tired of the apathy of his friend, his coldness, is callousness. It was that day he found Baker Street empty, and Sherlock Holmes gone.

 

* * *

 

On his mobile phone, Sherlock watched a live feed of his old friend, in his old house, at the end of his old life. He watched, and wished he could explain it all to him. Someday he would.

Someday he’d explain how his vision of Ricoletti’s bride gave away one key detail about what Moriarty had planned next: it wasn’t about the crime, it was about the people who pulled it off. The people behind the scenes. The people who had been ignored, disparaged, forgotten.

This wasn’t to be a battle between each enemies, it was to be one loyal lieutenant dispatching another.

The one person who mattered most – the one person without whom none of it would be possible.

Molly’s life was in danger.

And so he watched Bart’s – waited for the moment that they would strike.

And when she was taken, he didn’t try to find her, didn’t try to rescue her, didn’t allow himself to grieve her, and especially couldn’t bring himself to attend her funeral and face her furious family.

He didn’t because there was one piece in the puzzle they were all missing. The one piece they couldn’t possibly have.

The one piece John didn’t have – was the one piece he had all along.

“Initiate Janus.”

Janus – the god with two faces. The truth hidden in plain sight.

After the shootout in which SAS snipers shot Moriarty, only to have Molly mortally wounded in the crossfire, John may have thought he’d solved it. He would have thought that Janus was Moran – a man who had been cut and stretched, changed to resemble Moriarty – a man with a new face.

But Janus wasn’t Moran. Janus wasn’t a trickster, nor was he a criminal.

Janus was freedom for one woman, at the sake of another. A bargain struck by Mycroft, a large pay day for the one unlucky turncoat spy who just so happened to be of the same height, weight, cone structure and general appearance as one Molly Hooper.

Minor surgeries were required, but the effect was perfect

Even John and Mary couldn’t tell the difference.

Molly, the real Molly, had been taken to a safe house. And this, fake Molly, was ready to be taken, too – it was just a matter of time.

Because, as he later said to John – there was no way he could save her life. No way he could save their lives.

For Moly’s double, the plea bargain was a rich inheritance for her ailing mother, the same mother she had sold out state secrets to the Russians for. However, instead of dying with the shame of a traitor for a daughter, now she would have a hero’s honour – a story about death in Aleppo while saving an orphanage of refugees – or some such saccharine nonsense Mycroft would have Anthea cook up for the papers.

Fake Molly was taken.

Fake Molly was tortured, although Sherlock knew Moran’s torture could never rival that of Mycoft’s men – many of whom wrote the book on torture during their time at the CIA.

Fake Molly was killed – but so was Fake Moriarty.

Real Sherlock didn’t grieve, nor did he celebrate, because Real Sherlock had to go. It was time for the final phase of Janus.

 

* * *

 

 

Even when all this would be explained to John, as Sherlock hoped he would sometime in the future, even after all the twists and turns, he knew John would still have one more question:

Why?

Sherlock walked down the garden path towards the small cottage he had only seen before in photographs. Mycroft, however, had assured him it would suit their needs. Small enough to feel comfortable, but on grounds large enough that the constant guard (albeit guards hidden from the naked eye) would not make it feel like his new home was a mere glorified jail.

Sherlock took a deep breath before opening the door, knowing that crossing the threshold would be the beginning of a new life. Sherlock Holmes had to die.

But there was life inside that house. He knew that.

After a moment the door opened.

“Hello Sherlock,” came a familiar voice. One he hadn’t heard for months.

She took one step out of the shadows. She was at once the same and also entirely changed. Her eyes still warm, brown, deep pools bearing into his soul, but her hair unrecognisable – short, messy, auburn with yellow tips. Her sense of clothing remained idiosyncratic, brightly mismatched patterns, but the fabric which once hung loosely was now stretched taught over a bulging belly.

He took her into his arms and kissed her like with the desperation of a man at the end of his life.

In a way, he was. Some lives were ended, some new ones were beginning.

There would be a day when he wouldn’t have to use words to explain it all to John. He would only need to show him his wife, alive, and his child, unharmed and John would know why he had to say goodbye-

-for now.


End file.
